Archive for the ‘search term’ Tag

Getting to the top of web search results on Google can pay off big for your business. One way to boost your business is to attract online searchers seeking a service you don’t even offer.

Begin by researching which keywords potential customers use in online searches. Suppose your company only replaces parts for products rather than doing repairs, but most of the people are searching for the keyword “repair” of those products. There maybe a potential to turn people searching for “repair” into customers. Prospects will find your website only if it uses the same terminology as they do and testing hundreds of propositions about what will land a site a top Google ranking for a given search term.

As a example, take two important keywords “auto shop” and auto repair shop” as well as “muffler repair”. The tactics to use include building more links with sites run by “friendlies”, such as suppliers and distributors with whom you do business; adding relevant content to the home page, and improving linking structure among pages on the site.

Customer’s Lingo: It’s highly likely your prospects use at least some search terms you don’t use internally. To discover the terms your potential clients use, brainstorm possibilities in-house and phone clients to ask how they search for what you sell. Then select “Get keyword ideas” at Google.com/adwords and enter a search string. You will see plenty of variations, with the latest monthly search totals for each one.

A Page for Each Popular Keyword: After identifying commonly used keywords, pick the most widely used ones relevant to what you sell, look for ones with commercial intent. If someone searches for “oil” ,it is too generic. But if they search for “oil removal” , there is commercial intent behind it. Create a landing page with rich content about the most popular keyword; then the second-most popular and so on.

Google’s Trust: search engine ranks pages more highly if it trusts them to deliver content relevant to users’ searches. It trusts a given page more as the page ages, provided it has links with other sites that Google’s algorithms suggest have relevant related content. By altering a page’s URL or even just changing the suffix from ‘html’ to ‘php’, that becomes a new page, which has no age, no links and no trust. Setup a “301 redirect” for every renamed page.

Google’s Trust for the Home Page: Google trusts home pages more than other pages because they tend to have most links. How do you maximize your home page advantage by featuring lots of relevant content without compromising speed. You should run only the first few lines of each article on your home page with a “Read more” button and the rest of the article on another page. Google indexes the entite content as if it was on the home page.

Location: Customers for a wide array of goods and services prefer to buy from a company with a nearby location. For any category in which Google figures searches are likely to care about where a seller is, it first uses the searcher’s URL to determine his location. Then a Google map is displayed on the top right of the first page of the search results showing the closest businesses matching his keywords even if he omits a location. Businesses should claim their Google Places listing.

Power of Google Places: Buy a small Yellow Pages display ad, Google uses Yellow Pages listings as the basis for Places and trusts them to confirm that you run a real business. You will rank well only if you format your firm’s contact information identically in Places and in the Yellow Pages. Also use all five categories for listing your offerings. You can also ask a few non-competing nearby businesses to add a page to their sites recommending your firm, in return for reciprocating. Google sees such “local citations” as confirmation that a company has a good local reputation.

Google Places and Organic Searches: Google now combines the ranking points from both so that each type of search affects the other. For any company where geography matters, it’s now essential to optimize your ranking for both.

How do you figure out which sites have a real TrustRank and therefore will be good targets to approach about selling or trading links? You need to do some Google TrustRank mining to determine this. If you sell a particular product, type that product in Google. The top 40 results definitely have a TrustRank. The top 10 results definitely have a lot of TrustRank.

When using this method to determine TrustRank , make sure you only search for competitive terms. If you enter an uncommon search term, even your first five results might not have a lot of TrustRank, as Google will try to find results that are relevant to your search.

Example: Suppose you have just opened a golf supply store. So you will want to receive as many high TrustRank links to increase your own TrustRank. You will type golf into Google. As you scan the top 10 results, you should be looking for organizations, resources , conference pages, and any other established site that might be likely to link to your website merely because you are a part of the same industry. Those kinds of pages are what you should typically be looking for. Apart from industry sites, you should be seeking any site from which you have a reason to request a link.

Since golf is a high volume search and the top 10 results have a very good TrustRank. Therefore, any of them will be good targets to approach to acquire a link to their sites. A few informational sites about golf, which are perfect places to put your link provided you can convince them. Getting links from at least four sites on the first page, you’d be well on your way to the top of the results for most golf-related keywords.

Lets try a less common search term golf supply. The first 10 results have a good TrustRank. Golf supply is a common enough phrase, and looking above the results companies are buying ads alongside the search results. When you see a lot of ads come up around a search, it usually means that the search seemed worthy enough to other businesses that they were willing to invest money in it. That’s a sign that the search is competitive and the top 10 results probably had to earn their spots on the first page with a healthy amount of TrustRank. So once again, it is good about getting a link from any of these sites.

Now you can try a much less competitive phrase premium golf supply. Since the search is not a common one these sites may not have a good TrustRank. Clicking the sites on this page, I see that almost all of them are pages from e-commerce sites. There is very little chance that an e-commerce site would link to another website because it would distract buyers from making purchases. Some of these websites, however, are worth considering based on the fact that they have links right on the landing pages.

Now that you have an easy way to see which web pages are most trusted, you can quickly compile a list of websites that you should be approaching to ask whether they would be willing to link to your site. If your site were to receive a link from every website that shows up in the top 40 or 50 results for your most competitive search terms, your site could reach a top spot on Google.